


just theirs

by beanarie



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-10
Updated: 2016-01-10
Packaged: 2018-05-13 02:36:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 2,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5691430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beanarie/pseuds/beanarie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a collection of joanbell and joan & marcus centered ficlets and drabbles</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. domestic fic for rubberglue - 2/20/14

Marcus pulled his t-shirt over his head and dropped it just outside the bathroom door before he entered. “Hey.”

Joan didn’t open her eyes and patently refused to lift her head from the edge of the tub. “Hey.” She went silent until his shadow fell on her face. “If I were to marry you for your bathtub,” she drawled, “that wouldn’t make me a completely terrible person, would it? I mean, there would be other reasons or whatever.”

He reached out, using his thumb to smooth out the lines across her forehead, and she smiled.

"I don’t think I could lift my arms if you paid me," she confessed, exhaustion making the words slide into each other and adding a random laugh at the tail end.

He went in for quick kiss, then said quietly into her ear, “You want me to wash your hair?”

"Oh, God," she moaned.

He kissed her again and made a grab for the shampoo.


	2. martini fic for rubberglue - 4/13/14

“A Corona for me,” Marcus said, “and for my friend, a martini, right?”

The bartender looked at them expectantly. “We’ve got chocolate, apple… the peach one’s gotten really popular.”

Joan rested her elbows on the bar and leaned forward. “Just a vodka martini. Thanks.” She smiled at Marcus, calling him out for shaking his head. “What?”

“I should have known your tastes would run more James Bond than Carrie Bradshaw.”

She snatched the beer that was just placed in his hand. “I think we’re both Carries,” she said, stealing the first swig.

He burst out laughing and reclaimed his Corona.

~

Within three martinis and four beers his jacket was off, his shirt-sleeves unbuttoned and rolled up to his elbows. She ran her finger down the exposed edge of his tattoo. “Life motto?” she asked, recognizing that it’s writing but unable to read it.

“Just something to remember my parents,” he answered.

“Oh,” she said, withdrawing as though his skin burned her. The hint of a smile vanished in a split second. “I’m sorry.”

Her frown deepened for a moment or two before he swiveled in place, bumping her with his elbow. “So you still carrying around that baton? Been a long time since I’ve seen you kick anyone’s ass.”

~

“You do not smoke,” he announced, blinking as though that would change what was in front of him. Her bathroom break had extended longer than could be explained by the usual lines at the ladies room, so he’d gone searching and found her outside.

She blushed. “I had to try out a lot of different ways to stay awake when I was an intern. Cigarettes didn’t make my hands shake.” She dropped the barely smoked cigarette and stubbed it out with her heel. “Never more than two or three per shift. And it helped, when I was a companion. Sometimes just sitting outside and polluting the air together, it built trust.”

He nodded, thinking carefully about his response, then the booze forced him to forget it all and blurt out, “I like you.”

She turned a deeper shade of red. “I like you, too.”

“But I’m drunk.”

“And I’m drunk.”

He held out his hand. “So we’ll talk about it tomorrow?”

Her fingers entwined with his and squeezed gently. “Tomorrow sounds awesome.”

He couldn’t help but agree.


	3. follow-up to the martini fic for cezura - 8/2/14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> warning for microaggressions

Holmes had a tendency to run at the mouth that no one else in the group shared. Marcus was usually better at filtering out the salient details and ignoring the rest, but his eyes kept drifting back to Joan. The chunky gold ring on the middle finger of her right hand. The way she’d winced when Baker passed through with his ridiculously loud donkey laugh. Marcus knew that the story had something to do with a bar and an owner and a broken case of spirits, but that was about it.

“And therefore,” Holmes concluded, “Yourself and Watson will have to pose as interested singles.”

Both he and Joan blinked at Holmes.

Holmes made frustrated circles in the air with his hands, apparently realizing just then that they hadn’t been listening. “Participants in the ‘Looking to Mingle’ Trivia Night who hit it off and appear on the verge of- of-”

“Hooking up,” Joan said. “All the victims arrived alone, yet left in pairs.”

Marcus met her eyes. As much as they tried, neither could help a discreet laugh.

“Honestly,” Holmes said, disgusted. “Am I working with professionals or twelve year-old children?”

Marcus cleared his throat, reminding himself that there was a man at Chandler Memorial in a coma and a handful with concussions because of this mugger. “And you can’t do it because?”

“Well, even if I had not made myself persona non grata due to that misunderstanding with the owner of the establishment,” Holmes sniffed, “this event is for people of color only and I am very… white. Though with a tan, a liberal amount of stage makeup-”

Joan held up her hand. “You don’t need to finish that sentence. Ever.”


	4. bodyswap for sanguinity - 8/10/14

When Joan's hands start shaking, she knows that it isn't Marcus. Months of dogged determination and grueling therapy took away his tremor. She's seen him so angry his eyes don't focus, she's seen him at the tail-end of multiple all-nighters when he can barely string a sentence together. His hand doesn't shake. The problem isn't the body she's in, it's the mind she can never get away from. 

Joan splays her fingers (his fingers) on the table and breathes out slowly. Nothing about this is okay. She wants to run, but it isn't Marcus's legs she needs to get used to. Also time is running out.

"Watson," she hears from behind. The calm reassurances Sherlock greeted her with when she first woke up in the veterinary clinic have taken on a growing hint of panic. "You know that I would have played host myself. This was not by choice. The two parties have to lock hands for the duration, and I needed mine to perform the spell."

(*Hands,* Joan's thoughts repeat on a loop. Hands, hands, hands. That's what it always comes down to.) She scoffs quietly. As though a different host would have made things any easier. Doing this for her partner or for her... for Marcus, whose role in her life has no sufficient title. But it should. If they make it out of here, she'll put some thought into changing that.

If the still form in front of her looked like her colleague/friend/favorite member of the NYPD, Joan would feel compelled to do something right now. Kiss his forehead, maybe. But Marcus doesn't look like himself, and he's been unconscious since she woke up (She has only Sherlock's word that he's even in there and hasn't been released to the ether). Touching him would feel like giving comfort to her own reflection.

Sherlock clears his throat. She turns to glare. 

"Look, I know it seems rather absurd. How could it have been easier to swap bodies than to perform a relatively uncomplicated operation myself? But, well, I have been practicing magic since I was a boy." Of course he'd never told her. In all fairness, she wouldn't have believed him without a *very* compelling demonstration. She can only imagine what he did to convince Marcus. "Surgery, not so much. Apart from a few dozen dissections, which do not count really at all."

She uses a square of gauze to wipe the sweat from Marcus's brow, trying not to think about the increasingly shallow breaths, the thready, weakening pulse. His (their) condition is worsening. 

"Watson?" Sherlock touches her arm, giving her the full force of his scrutiny. She thinks he's starting to realize that Gerald Castoro was not her last patient, that another experience washed away the incremental amount of progress she'd made. He's most likely assuming that it occurred some time during their year apart; she won't say a word to change his mind. The intense curiosity soon gives way to equally intense determination. "Ferry service off the island will not be resumed until tomorrow morning at the earliest, and helicopters are not permitted to fly until the hurricane warning has lifted completely, which also will not be for another twelve hours. You would not have survived the wait, or indeed, even the journey, in-" He waves his hand, indicating Marcus on the table. "*Your* current condition. This is the only way."

That doesn't mean that anything about this is okay.

Joan looks at the clock, calculating how much time this will take. "You have the materials for the spell?" 

"Right at hand?" he asks, confused. "Well, yes. The book is right here. The herbal mixture is still in your systems from the original spell."

"Good." Joan pulls on a fresh pair of gloves. "The second I tell you, you need to be ready to change us back."

"But what if-" 

She meets his gaze without faltering. Their efforts were meant to give her a chance, nothing more. If this should lead to shock, uncontrollable bleeding, she knows where she would rather be. (Not Marcus, too. Especially not in her place.)

He winces at the force of her certainty. "Very well."

Joan nods to herself, takes a deep breath, and picks up the scalpel.


	5. fake married for sanguinity - 8/12/14

Marcus’s first instinct is to blurt out, “No, you’re not.” and Angelica Barclay just laughs. Because of course if a woman who looks like Joan Watson says she’s his wife, she has to be telling the truth and any denials are just a joke.

Leaning forward on the bar stool, Joan lays her fingers on his arm, giving him a smile radiating with long-held fondness before turning her attention back to Angelica. “He gets amnesia very quickly, poor dear. Don’t let him drink any more red wine.”

Angelica laughs again, utterly disarmed. Marcus feels his stomach drop ever so slightly. Either Joan has upped her skill level at manipulating people, or she’s gotten a hell of a lot more comfortable about putting it into play.

As Angelica removes herself a few minutes later, Marcus gives her a little wave, then turns to Joan. “I told you I don’t see her as a suspect,” he mutters out of one side of his mouth.

Joan plants one right on his lips. Whoa. “And I told you that I *do*,” she says, sickly sweet, like every couple who ever tried to fight in public without fighting.

For a minute there after Holmes took off for parts unknown, Marcus wasn’t sure what he’d get, Joan without the guy who taught her how to be a detective. It’s looking like Watson solo is sharing a couple things with the upstart apprentice who got arrested for breaking into a murderer’s car. She seems a little more dangerous, but he can’t decide yet if that’s a bad thing.

“Just back me up on this,” she says. Her smile is still in place for everyone who might be watching, but it’s dipped just enough for him to see how much she has to prove.

Marcus kisses her back. To help their cover, no other reason. “Of course. Babe.”


	6. kitty walks in on joanbell kissing for anon - 12/6/14

Kitty’s laugh sounds like shock, embarrassment and amusement got baked into a cake, and Joan and Marcus take their lips back, but don’t move a millimeter out of each other’s physical space. Marcus swivels his head around to look at Kitty. “You come in here for something important?”

“Not… really,” she says, backing away.

Joan tsks and gives him a mild glare. He rolls his eyes, sighing. “Anyway.” He kisses her again, his hand settling on the small of her back before letting go and leaving the room with a smile on his face.

“So,” Kitty says.

Joan smiles briefly at the doorway. “Yeah.”


	7. hemlock end-tag for amindamazed - 2/12/15

Marcus held up the wall on the left side of the door to the ladies restroom, while Holmes and his struggle to quiet his incredibly noisy thoughts were on the right.

When Joan came out, she made a show of being annoyed at them. “I wasn’t about to get lost. And anyway both of you should be at the-” She swallowed heavily. “At the scene.” If she’d been crying, Marcus couldn’t see any hint of it.

“Watson,” Holmes said softly.

“This is an investigation, right?” she said. “And you’re detectives. I’ll get what I can here and I’ll meet you.” Her voice didn’t shake. She sounded no different than she did any other day. Except she was telling them to split up, right when she should know they couldn’t leave her alone.

“I don’t think-” Holmes was cut off by her text alert. She held up a hand as she took out her phone.

Her expression dipped into a slight frown. “Gerald’s dad is wondering where I disappeared to,” she said, taking off down the hall. “I need to get back.”

Marcus tried to meet Holmes’s eye, but the guy jetted, scrambling to get in front of Joan and stop her in her tracks. Marcus followed a few steps behind, not wanting to make her feel crowded.

Holmes sort of bounced around her, raising and lowering his hands like he didn’t know what to do with them. She let out an irritated sigh. “Sherlock, what? We both have jobs to do.”

“I think perhaps a walk outside is in order, hm? Take a stroll around the hospital grounds, clear your head?”

“No,” she replied firmly. “What is your problem? I have to-”

“I’m aware. I simply think you may benefit from a–temporary–change in scenery.”

“Enough, okay?” Her tone hadn’t really changed, but a muscle went pop in her jaw. “Would you stop coddling me? I don’t understand-”

“Who’s Gerald?” Marcus asked quietly. The everything’s fine facade cracked and fell away. In its place was the confused, questioning stare of a lost kid. “You just said Gerald’s dad texted you.”

Joan shook her head. Her right arm creeped across her stomach to grasp her left elbow.

Holmes cleared his throat. “The captain wants us all back at the precinct to regroup. I will inform Mr. Mittal that you were called away for the purposes of the investigation. He’ll have to understand.”

She breathed out hard and straightened her rounded shoulders. “We’ll go. After.”

Marcus eyed first Joan and then Holmes. Neither of them was in a hurry to clarify exactly what was going on. He could tell, though, that returning to the room where they just declared her boyfriend dead might break his friend apart. As much as he cared about victims, she mattered more. “Gregson was pretty insistent, Joan.”

She gave him a tiny shadow of a grateful smile, turned her head from side to side, and resumed walking. Holmes got in front, again, to hold open the door to the waiting room where the Mittals still sat with the doctor.


	8. high school au for sanguinity - 9/27/15

Marcus shoots the girl–Joan, the teacher called her Joan Watson–a look that lands mostly on her ponytail. She’s squinting at the bunsen burner and messing with the rubber tubing that connects the gas. “So, uh…”

Apparently satisfied, she turns the spigot and puts on her goggles. “Yeah?”

“Just so you know, I’m, uh, not one of those lab partners who tries to get out of doing the work.”

She creates a spark with the flint and soon has a nice little flame going. She looks over at him, turning on a 500 watt smile he can’t help but return. “I think we’ll do fine. You wanna handle the directions?”


End file.
